VZW disabling tethering apps from market

[Natey2]

$4 for 2gigs, huh? Planning on going to Sprint (or perhaps you work there or own stock), because that will put VZW out of business.

The plan is designed to encourage more users who don't have a data plan to use (a little of) it, while discouraging bandwidth hogging by the masses.

Under this new plan, the Carriers will gladly welcome tethering of any kind

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and tethering is included? lol, no way, no how. They would essentially be giving away their services...

Try the formula with C(3G)=2.5, and
C(4G)=3.0

2GB will be $10 (using 3G)
4GB will be $40 (edit)

20GB will be $1000

The Carriers will give you free tethering software!
Forget SMS and text messaging nickel and dime revenues.


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[czerdrill]

The plan is designed to encourage more users who don't have a data plan to use (a little of) it, while discouraging bandwidth hogging by the masses.

Under this new plan, the Carriers will gladly welcome tethering of any kind

Sent from my unrooted DroidX using DroidForums app

and tethering is included? lol, no way, no how. They would essentially be giving away their services...

Try the formula with C(3G)=2.5, and
C(4G)=3.0

2GB will be $10 (using 3G)
4GB will be $24

20GB will be $1000

The Carriers will give you free tethering software!
Forget SMS and text messaging nickel and dime revenues.


Sent from my unrooted DroidX using DroidForums app

yah i mean that would be great, but why would they do that? Barely any of their customers use 2GB a month so why would they allow the tiers to be calculated that way? They'd just be hemorrhaging revenue by doing that...they'd essentially be losing $20/month for 95% of their users with a smartphone plan.

 

[Snow02]

The vast majority of carriers in other countries do not charge for tethering. We'll get there eventually.

 

[kodiak799]

The vast majority of carriers in other countries do not charge for tethering. We'll get there eventually.

Don't hold your breath. It's rare for a company to give something away when people are willing to pay money for it.

 

[neoxaero]

Will those of us currently on an unlimited plan (4g) be grandfathered in and retain our unlimited 4g when verizon switches to tiered data pricing?

I certainly hope so considering I bought a thunderbolt and still don't have 4g service in my area

 

[freezyfreaky]

Here's an interesting FAQ by cnet when AT&T went to tiered pricing: What AT&T's tiered pricing means for you (FAQ) | Signal Strength - CNET News

Their data plans:
$15/month for 200MB - $15 per 200 MB after (talk about terrible!!!)
$25/month for 2GB - $10 per 1GB after

How much data does the average smartphone user actually consume in a month?
According to Nielsen, the average iPhone subscriber uses 400MB of data per month. But all other smartphone users typically use between 40MB and 80MB of data per month. AT&T says that on average, 65 percent of its customers use less than 200 MB per month, and it claims 98 percent of its smartphone customers use, on average less than 2 GB of data per month.

Who will feel the most pain from these changes?
Those most affected by the change are the 3 percent of customers who AT&T says are using 40 percent of the network assets. These are heavy data users. It will also likely affect iPad users and customers who want to use their iPhone or smartphone as a modem to connect to the Internet wirelessly.

Another interesting fact made by the article:
In fact, according to BillShrink, a company that analyzes cell phone bills and advises people on the best service for their usage patterns, data consumption on smartphones has increased 3.5 times in the past 18 months.

Please note that this article was posted on June 4, 2010 so the figures listed is relevant to then. Most likely some of these figures have grown since then.

 

[czerdrill]

Yeah the figures are almost a year old, but even still I can't imagine that 98% of the users have suddenly started using over 2GB a month...it's a safe bet that a huge amount of users are still being grossly overcharged for very minimal data usage. That's why the tiers, if they come out, will reflect that. A low tier would be around 15, and anything over 2GB would probably remain at or around $30 a month. No fiscal sense for Verizon to go any other way, really.

 

[freezyfreaky]

Yeah the figures are almost a year old, but even still I can't imagine that 98% of the users have suddenly started using over 2GB a month...it's a safe bet that a huge amount of users are still being grossly overcharged for very minimal data usage. That's why the tiers, if they come out, will reflect that. A low tier would be around 15, and anything over 2GB would probably remain at or around $30 a month. No fiscal sense for Verizon to go any other way, really.

I agree with this. There is no way Verizon is going to offer their tier prices to be cheaper than this. I probably average 500-600MB/month, definitely less than a GB, but then again I usually have wireless access wherever I go. I would say a good bit of that is just streaming music. If I wanted to stream video, I am not going to watch it on the little screen on my phone unless I'm on a long train ride or waiting at the DMV or doctor's office. I'm sure most people would fall under my use case.

What is a little bit of an eye-popping stat is that 3% of customers are using 40% of the network assets. That means the other 97% is using the rest of the 60% of the network assets. If AT&T is able to eliminate those 3% and free up 40% of the network assets, that means they can add a huge number of subscribers. I'm guessing that the majority of smartphone users would most likely get the 2G/month plan for $25 which means, if AT&T can fill up the rest of the network capacity, and giving a measly $5/month discount, they would be making much more per subscriber without any capital expenditure to add bandwidth. I think these prices are still way too high.

 

[cynnar]

did someone really refer to free tether as being the same as murder?

I drove the speed limit for the last two days as an experiment, now that was murder!

OMG!!!! You are one crazy animal must have taken forever to get anywhere.

Sent from my Droid

 

[xan]

did someone really refer to free tether as being the same as murder?

I drove the speed limit for the last two days as an experiment, now that was murder!

OMG!!!! You are one crazy animal must have taken forever to get anywhere.

Sent from my Droid

I know it was torture... me and a cop buddy went golfing, on the way there he was like " wtf xan? Why you driving so damn slow?"

 

[czerdrill]

I'm glad the response that I was just emailed was deleted....Cuz that was ridiculous

 

[cynnar]

did someone really refer to free tether as being the same as murder?

I drove the speed limit for the last two days as an experiment, now that was murder!

OMG!!!! You are one crazy animal must have taken forever to get anywhere.

Sent from my Droid

I know it was torture... me and a cop buddy went golfing, on the way there he was like " wtf xan? Why you driving so damn slow?"

ROFL. And I can actually see that happening.

Sent from my Droid

 

[jthorpe]

Well I don't use the app to tether data, but I do like it for sending and receiving text messages on my computer. I love that feature. I have a Mifi2200 for any data traffic... It's the only app I know of that allows texting via computer like that as far as I know anyway.

You can use android screencast and control your phone on your computer.

Thanks for the tip. I'm gonna try that.

 

[pc747]

(cheers to the people who linked me this)
from phandroid.com

T-Mobile Bringing Unlimited Data to $70 Prepaid Plan May 22nd

by Quentyn Kennemer on May 5th, 2011 at 11:56 am

For those of you who’d rather ride the prepaid wave on Magenta, listen up – you’re no longer bound to 2GB of sweet 4G goodness after May 22nd. T-Mobile has informed everyone that they’ll be allowing users on the $70 unlimited plan to now chow down on as much data as they can eat. Those of you who are more than fine with the $50 plan will be happy to know that you’ll only be throttled (on a 4G phone) after eating up 100MB instead of being forced to pay more to use more. Sweet stuff, I’d say. [TmoNews]

 

[Graymayre]

*and Verizon start scratching their head, questioning whether their upcoming plans for data is really a good move*

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